was teeming with
women from the hills and villages round, come in to sell provisions.

The _Jews' Quarter_ lies on one side of the feddan, shut in by a gate at
night and locked--a squalid, noisy, over-populated spot, where the
worst-kept donkeys and most filth are to be met with. Tetuan is a clean
city: on every animal killed the "butchers" have to pay a tax; the tax
goes towards the sweeping of the streets once a week, and towards their
paving--that is, if the basha is conscientious: the last basha ate and
drank the tax.

A gutter runs down the middle of the streets, where chickens are killed,
and the heads and uneatable parts of flesh, fish, and fowl thrown. Mules
and donkeys walk along the gutter, while foot-people flatten themselves
against the walls. A well-laden mule fairly absorbs the width of the
little streets.

The condition of these wretched transport animals is not due so much to
wanton cruelty as to neglect, and to a callousness bred of long
familiarity. A Moor will not trouble to prevent his beasts having sore
backs and fistulated withers and raw hindquarters, any more than he sees
that his children are warmly clad and suitably fed. Fond of both, he is
foolish and apathetic, treating his mules roughly, cramming them with
unnecessary food or neglecting them, and invariably working them till
they drop.

One or two little cafes we passed round the feddan, and banished any
connection between them and lunch for ever and a day.

A little room in the shade hung with yellow matting, no chairs, but a
wide divan at the far end, where a few Moors sat cross-legged or
reclined, smoking long pipes of soothing kif, and eating the pernicious
haschisch--this constitutes a cafe. A few of the Moors are playing cards;
the rest look on. A dome-shaped pewter teapot, filled with a brew of
steaming tea, stands on a low table, with a painted glass beside it half
full of mint, which a freckled boy in a coarse jellab fills up from the
teapot to the brim and puts to his lips; then he lights a cheap
cigarette. A great urn, with an oil lamp under it, stands in one corner.

No self-respecting Moor patronizes these cafes: he is the most fanatical
of Mohammedans in a land reputed to be more strictly religious than any
Eastern country. In public he observes his Prophet's laws, only
indulging _sub rosa_ in smoking--"eating the shameful," as it is called.

Mohammed knew very well that Eastern peoples drink to get drunk, and
smoke an